YEOVIL MP David Laws has won support from colleagues in his calls to Gordon Brown to listen, learn and act' after new figures showed that the Government has wrongly paid out around £9-billion of tax credits in three years in overpayments, fraud and error

Graduates paying off student loans face months of uncertainty about their repayments after another Revenue computer glitch.

The Student Loan Company (SLC) said some of the 2.6m student borrowers "will receive statements that will incorrectly show them as not having made any student loan repayments" for the tax year 2004-5.

A spokesman said: "There was a glitch in the recording of information at HM Revenue & Customs when they transferred to a digital IT system. We can't say roughly how many people have been affected. There have been some delays processing employers' annual returns for the 2004/05 tax year. We are waiting for HM Revenue & Customs to complete the exchange." Borrowers' statements should show their employers' deductions from their earnings during that year.

advertisementDavid Laws, the Liberal Democrat shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "The HMRC's IT system is in a state of shambles. Not only for their own areas of policies such as tax credits, but also for pensions and now student loans."

The SLC claims it has sent letters to all borrowers concerned. The spokesman said: "The absence of details of these repayments is only temporary and our message to borrowers is not to be concerned, as those affected will be sent a final statement for 2004-05 reflecting their repayments as soon as their repayment details are passed to SLC by HMRC."

The SLC says statements only from the tax year 2004/05 have been affected. But a Daily Telegraph reader said his latest student loan statement for the tax year 2005/06 showed total repayments of £600, but his payslips add up to an annual payment of "closer to double that amount". A HMRC spokesman said: "The processing of repayments for 2005/06 is progressing normally."

A WOMAN's bank details were accidentally given out to somebody else by the Government's Tax Credit Office, which has blamed the blunder on a faulty printer.Jan Price, 52, says she is now worried about who has seen her bank details and is afraid that whoever they were sent to may be able to access her account.

TENS of thousands of hard-pressed South Yorkshire families were overpaid hundreds of pounds in tax credits for the third year running, says the Government.New Treasury figures revealed 47,700 local families were overpaid £38.1m in 2005/06 - equivalent to £798 per family.